Presentations play a huge role in building professionals’ equity with the audience. SlideUpLift provides the know-how and the right presentation tools to do so.
As a business professional, you likely have found yourself making presentations to a variety of audiences.
What may not be fully apparent however is, with each presentation, you are silently building or eroding your equity, depending on how the presentations have been received by the audience. This is especially true since presentations tend to be group events that create their own chatter post the event.
Oftentimes, these add up to bigger things and carry implications for your career. Numerous studies have indicated that star presenters who prepare well, are able to articulate their message with clarity, and end up influencing their audience, tend to gain an edge in their career progression
For many professionals, however, it is not entirely clear what the true success factors really are that differentiate between a mediocre presentation and a memorable one. While the ability to present well may not be the only factor influencing their career growth, it certainly contributes to possible stagnation and undermining of their own potential.
Read More: Pliant Named As Top 20 Vendor
So why do many professionals feel at sea when it comes to presentations?
Let’s find out!
Never Trained for it?
In reality, many work professionals fumble with the art of storytelling and are continually underselling their work, which will produce a glass barrier as their seniority rises.
It happens in a plethora of situations, including sales pitches, project presentations, business reviews, and so on.
Each of these scenarios reflects a moment of truth, a squandered opportunity: a failure to bring to the table the best of what one knows or has.
“We, are not trained to present – to make our presence felt. Often times we do not feel comfortable taking center stage and have no formal education on influencing the audience in high stakes settings,” says Manglam Vashisht – founder of SlideUpLift.
It indeed takes several skills to pull off a memorable presentation. Many of these start much before the presentation itself happens. As they say: “Well begun is half done.”
What skills?
A good presenter must plan out his story, logical arguments, content structure, and visual representation and put it all in slides. Then, get ready for the D-day: the presentation day itself.
Depending on the presenter’s expertise, each stage of this procedure is loaded with failure points. Furthermore, expecting one person to have all of these skills can be unreasonable.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Declan Ivory, Vice President of Customer Support at Intercom
What’s the Solution?
According to studies, a well-designed slide deck makes 91% of professionals feel more confident while making a presentation.
On the contrary, in the absence of such support, the presenter feels isolated in high-stakes situations and is not well-prepared to succeed.
Since the success of the company is contingent on the success of the individuals in such endeavors, it is rather puzzling that businesses do not often consider providing their associates with the resources required to raise presentation standards.
This is where companies such as SlideUpLift come in: they provide a plethora of resources, including ready-to-use templates on a wide range of business themes that are preformatted and pre-populated with starter content.
This is extremely beneficial for team members since they do not have to start from scratch, can build on existing knowledge bases, and do not have to stress about the visual design of the slides, which is a highly specialized topic.
Some companies also choose the route of getting expert help to prepare presentations- in what is known as Presentation as a Service
“In addition to using our template libraries, many forward-looking companies engage us as partners to help build presentations for their high stakes, high-pressure situations like responding to RFPs, building detailed project documentation, preparing annual reports, etc. This creates high impact, high-quality content with powerful visual appeal, protects brand equity, and frees up high-value resources inside their organization to do the thinking, rather than slide building work,” says Manglam Vashisht – founder of SlideUpLift.
Companies like SlideUpLift often form long-term partnerships with their clients, helping them to accomplish presentation tasks with minimum input and avoid spinning the proverbial wheel.
This solution not only provides companies with access to a comprehensive spectrum of resources, such as storytellers, consultants, and graphic designers, but also acts as a buffer in cases when their in-house resources are overburdened.
With these resources, companies can do their bit in making it just a bit easier for their team members in making impactful presentations. This can make their team members feel more empowered and lead to spirals of success inside the organization. Ultimately, it comes down to unlocking the potential of talent in the organization in making all-round impact.
